/lit/ - Literature

>>16603113
>he thinks philebus is primarily about "pleasure"
SOCRATES: But where does it come from, unless the body of the universe
which has the same properties as ours, but more beautiful in all respects,
happens to possess a soul?
PROTARCHUS: Clearly from nowhere else.
SOCRATES: We surely cannot maintain this assumption, with respect to
our four classes (limit, the unlimited, their mixture, and their cause—which
is present in everything): that this cause is recognized as all-encompassing
wisdom, since among us it imports the soul and provides training for the
body and medicine for its ailments and in other cases order and restitution,
but that it should fail to be responsible for the same things on a large scale
in the whole universe (things that are, in addition, beautiful and pure),
for the contrivance of what has so fair and wonderful a nature.
PROTARCHUS: That would make no sense at all.
SOCRATES: But if that is inconceivable, we had better pursue the alternative
account and affirm, as we have said often, that there is plenty of the
unlimited in the universe as well as sufficient limit, and that there is, above
them, a certain cause, of no small significance, that orders and coordinates
the years, seasons, and months, and which has every right to the title of
wisdom and reason.
PROTARCHUS: The greatest right.
SOCRATES: But there could be no wisdom and reason without a soul.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: You will therefore say that in the nature of Zeus there is the
soul of a king, as well as a king’s reason, in virtue of this power displayed
by the cause, while paying tribute for other fine qualities in the other
divinities, in conformity with the names by which they like to be addressed.
PROTARCHUS: Very much so.
SOCRATES: Do not think that we have engaged in an idle discussion here,
Protarchus, for it comes as a support for the thinkers of old who held the
view that reason is forever the ruler over the universe.


>“Justice and self-control do not shine out through their images down here, and neither do the other objects of the soul’s admiration; the senses are so murky that only a few people are able to make out, with difficulty, the original of the likenesses they encounter here. But beauty was radiant to see at that time when the souls, along with the glorious chorus (we were with Zeus, while others followed other gods), saw that blessed and spectacular vision and were ushered into the mystery that we may rightly call the most blessed of all. And we who celebrated it were wholly perfect
and free of all the troubles that awaited us in time to come, and we gazed in rapture at sacred revealed objects that were perfect, and simple, and unshakeable and blissful. That was the ultimate vision, and we saw it in pure light because we were pure ourselves, not buried in this thing we are carrying around now, which we call a body, locked in it like an oyster in its shell.